tennis is a conversation (subtext: tennis is FUCKING): a thread for luca guadagnino’s CHALLENGERS

"Time Will Crawl" was our "Hot in Herre"

lol Guadagnino must be a fan? My first thought was Reznor because of his Bowie ties, but it doesn't say anything about that.

Shout-out to whoever picked Lily Allen's "Smile" to be playing in the Stanford cafeteria in 2007

They really were the blueprint. She’s Tashi but for artists in 1933! pic.twitter.com/TIiyTA4GOn

— 𝕯𝖎𝖑𝖉𝖔 𝕭𝖆𝖌𝖌𝖎𝖓𝖘 🎾💦 (@EmmaTolkin) April 30, 2024

heh -- after Bull Durham I thought of Easy Living.

i just know everybody would’ve been freaking out about jeanne dielman if it sounded like this pic.twitter.com/h0b7FDUdEc

— Jared Gilman (@realJaredGilman) May 1, 2024

I've already sent that to two different people. Love it--I'm freaking out.

I had a feeling that score would inspire memes

It's a great score. (Giving it a listen now, first time away from seeing the film, which I did very much like.)

Very nice

Walking right into the trap of thinking this film might have aspired to more than just being not terrible... Except for the last 10 minutes, it's not terrible.

I loved Zendaya dancing to Nelly. And I liked the shot of her in the stands staring straight ahead as everyone else turned their heads from one side to the other--a director who knows some film history (with the intriguing suggestion that Tashi might be a psycho of sorts).

But Jesus, that ending. I especially hated it because to point out how preposterous it is is to immediately invite the response "But it's supposed to be--that's the joke of it." It made me think of the stodgy old Color of Money, which ends with a dynamic that's very comparable. The way Scorsese resolved it--the revelation of what actually happened--is devastating. My sense here was that you had a clueless (about tennis) director who thought he'd just hedge all bets. The good news: I was able to complete two crossword puzzles and read a short novel during those last three points.

Thought the score, which was fine as music, was employed laughably at times--the way it would suddenly come in for five or six seconds and then get cut off just as suddenly.

lol I loved the last 10 minutes! But yeah, if that doesn't work for you then the movie as a whole isn't going to. fwiw I think it gets tennis very well, but the story he's telling at the end isn't about tennis.

The tennis before the last 10 minutes was credible--although to my eye (and my eyesight's not all sharp), balls that were in were getting called out and vice-versa/.

Oh yeah, it wasn't technically perfect, but they put some real effort into it, hired Brad Gilbert as a consultant. It did feel immersed in that world to me, and I've seen tennis players saying the same.

Fun interview with Gilbert here, for those into the tennis side of it: https://www.gq.com/story/brad-gilbert-challengers-interview

Pretty interesting. I suddenly want to see if I can find a cheap copy or stream of this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Players_(1979_film)

Oops:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Players_(1979_film)

That should go right to the film but doesn't...so we'll try this:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079723/

Always a good place to start:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbEbG5T-4fs

Wesley Morris and Alissa Wilkinson chew on the ending:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/07/movies/challengers-ending-zendaya.html

Not surprisingly, I thought the ending was the best mainstream movie ending I’ve seen in many cycles (last line of BARBIE probably pretty close)

(Oh I guess THE FABELMANS’ ending was also great)

Have you seen the emotional home run scene from The Natural?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQvUjK27ybk

👍🏻

To be honest, I feel like I have a pretty good handle on what these characters want (maybe because I went back and saw it again!). Art wants Tashi, and he wants to rest. Patrick also wants Tashi, and he wants Art, too, but he also wants to crush them both a little, so that he feels like he’s reintegrated into their relationship. And Tashi just wants to win at tennis, because to her that is a relationship. That is love. She says as much the night they all first meet.

I think I fall on the side that Tashi won the match, because the scream of “Come on!” she lets out just before she smiles is precisely the same scream she lets out when she was winning the junior U.S. Open all those years earlier. But I think you’re also right, and that whatever happens right there at the end will result in expulsion, and probably it doesn’t matter. The whole point was for Art to get his groove back and Patrick to feel like he’s back in the game — that is, the three-way relationship — and they got that, too.

sounds right

I love Ron Shelton's good movies, and obv he would've been a less formally sassy director for this material -- but then his movies are cheerfully heterosexual. Morris misses that point, I think.

this looks like an insurance advert https://t.co/sRsok9Oz3b

— joolsd (@joolsd) May 19, 2024

He makes very pretty advertisements too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pObRIP1H4us

I'll buy it

god i loved this ridiculous movie

https://i.imgur.com/gf3udlL.gif

My wife went to see this and she thought it was so bad she walked out!

what insurance adverts involve a live tennis ball cam

My wife went to see this and she thought it was so bad she walked out!

― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Monday, May 20, 2024 1

how well do you know her

xp I don't think something seeming like a stylized commercial or music video is an indictment! A lot of directors and cinematographers started out doing that (or do so as a side gig) because you get to do a lot of interesting action camera work and the budget per minute is higher than a movie would be.

The reason entire movies tend to not be that punchy is it'd be tiring and expensive.

That tennis ball thing just seems pointless. Like, there's no possible way it can serve a narrative function that could not have been served in any other way. It's just the director (or, more precisely, the VFX department) jacking off.

Or having fun! (Not that jacking off and having fun are mutually exclusive.) I enjoyed it in the moment, it was in keeping with the dizziness of the whole thing.

(Not that jacking off and having fun are mutually exclusive.

on ILX I guess they are

every camera choice must serve a narrative function

but it's also one of the last shots of a tennis exchange, and the tension has been building over the whole movie to this point, so yeah i'd say it serves a narrative purpose, given that these two are only communicating their totally repressed love for each other through the medium of a tennis ball. why am i arguing with someone who hasn't seen the movie

the audience i saw this with were audibly enjoying themselves throughout the movie but they really lost it during that scene

every camera choice must serve a narrative function

YES. That function may be "disruption, because narrative coherence is a bourgeois construct," but every shot in a movie must carry meaning, whether textual or subtextual.

but it's also one of the last shots of a tennis exchange, and the tension has been building over the whole movie to this point, so yeah i'd say it serves a narrative purpose, given that these two are only communicating their totally repressed love for each other through the medium of a tennis ball.

So it's a cumshot? Why didn't you say so? That, I get.

Do they love each other? I'm not sure. They'd fuck each other blue, yeah. It's all in the game.

yeah i think i meant to type "repressed longing"

I know this is small fry, but, god, to watch a mainstream movie reeking of sex and whose camera kept leering at totally willing male actors was such a trip.

It is obvious subtext needed to be text, ergo, the final shot of the movie would have to involve one ramming a churro down the other's throat since they left that plot point hanging uh wait.

The churro scene is great because it's so on the nose, it's like a porn movie parody and it's hilarious.

down to the powdered sugar on the nose